Severe weather has always proven to be unpredictable and, at times, incredibly destructive. A homeowner generally does not have a protective shelter to shield his or her family from such damaging events. Whether it be a tornado, hurricane, or even simply high velocity windstorms, many homes are not built to withstand such powerful natural forces. Tragic occurrences of cyclonic activity have even recently caused hundreds of millions of dollars on widespread destruction in certain areas of the United States, not to mention problems prevalent with monsoons and typhoons in other areas of the globe. Particularly hard hit are houses and other like structures that are typically formed of wooden frames and are built to withstand much lower wind velocities and other natural forces.
Additionally, though, the potential loss of life with such high wind speed events has taken its toll. Building collapse certainly contributes to such tragic results; however, the more likely issue that causes death during such events is the haphazard and high velocity movement of various materials and debris. At 200 miles per hour (MPH), even a simple small object may become an incredibly dangerous, even deadly, projectile. Larger objects, as well, may cause the some results, wreaking havoc on life and property alike.
As such, various developments in shelter designs and materials have been undertaken throughout the last century or so. In the dustbowl region (Oklahoma, Kansas, for instance), the presence of storm cellars and other underground locations have been utilized as means to avoid severe thunderstorms and accompanying tornados. Generally, though, such cellars have a top cover that is not of great strength to withstand debris and other materials that may be tossed and projected by high speed winds. Further developments around the country have included the reliance on basements and even inner closets and rooms that are away from windows (due to the potential for glass break that may cause significant harm, as well as the exposure to outside debris that may transfer easily through such breakable barriers. Such protections are limited to the potential for preventing complete removal of the other portions of the subject home, certainly, and thus present a homeowner with quite limited protections as a result. Further devices have included building concrete rooms into the structure of a home, or even underneath a home, for a place to stay while a storm passes. The great cost and logistical difficulties with erecting such a concrete structure has led to the need to develop far easier and, preferably, lighter weight structures that allow for proper protection, and which may also provide greater reliability to a homeowner if and when such a structure is needed.
Thus, metal-based storm shelters have been developed as effective alternatives to the past concrete, etc., configurations and designs. Such metal-based shelters have proven, at least generally, to provide effective protection from wind speeds and projectile debris to a certain extent. Unfortunately, though, such past configurations have proven relatively difficult to erect, particularly to allow a homeowner the chance to select a proper size structure with any changes relatively easy to implement. As of today, the standard metal-based storm shelters require non-aligned top, side, and end panels with connections provided by length- and width-wise connecting components. Such connections provide the overall length and width limitations for such prior designs, effectively preventing any manner of potentially adding to the structure size, if desired. As well, the necessity to contact and connect all panels to single connection components is a rather cumbersome operation that creates undesirable difficulties to the homeowner once the choice to build such a structure is initiated. In essence, the prior metal-based structures, although some may be considered modular in design, all limit the versatility and pose certain problems to actually build. The aim of the industry is to provide easily erected, comfortable, potentially and easily modifiable, and, overall, extremely safe and reliable if an unfortunate severe weather front appears. To date, however, the storm shelter industry is extremely limited in terms of ease of manufacture as there are no discussions within the pertinent prior art of a storm shelter configuration that includes modular components that do not compromise strength upon connection together through the direct connection of all panels in alignment with one another, at least. Thus, there still exists a need to provide an easily manufactured and assembled storm shelter that provides the maximum level of protection for as long as a high wind event is present.